the things he advocated was free love between the races, so he had quite a mixed bag of people at his, ahem, services. They were driven out of every place they settled in. At last the Sunborn had a vision that he and his lovers were to found a holy city where all might live according to his creed, greenies included.
“And then, somehow or other, the heir to House Spell-metal fell under his influence.”
“That was it,” Smith said. “And the Spellmetals disapproved.”
“Of course they did. The boy was young and thick as two planks, but he adored the Sunborn and he was, of course, rich. So he offered the Sunborn and his followers a huge estate House Spellmetal owned, up near their marble quarries, to be the site of the new holy city. Away they all went and moved into the family mansion there. The boy’s father was beside himself.
“You can guess the rest. House Spellmetal raised an army and went up there to get the boy back and forcibly evict the rest of them, with the exception of the Sunborn, whom they intended to skin alive. They didn’t get him alive, however. They didn’t get anybody alive. There was an armed standoff and finally a massacre.”
Smith shook his head. Mrs. Smith finished her drink.
“I have heard,” she said, “that Konderon Spellmetal strode in through the broken wall and found his son dead in the arms of an equally dead Yendri girl, pierced with one arrow in the very act itself. I’ve heard he swore eternal vengeance on any follower of the Sunborn, and hasn’t thought of another thing since that hour.”
“But they all died,” said Smith.
“Apparently there were a few who fled out through the back, just before the massacre.” Mrs. Smith shrugged and stared into her empty glass before setting it aside. “Women and children, mostly. The Spellmetals had a body they said was the Sunborn’s skinned, but there have always been rumors it wasn’t really him, and he’s supposed to have been sighted over the years here and there. One couple, a man and his wife and baby, went straight to the law and turned themselves in. They weren’t mixed-race, and it turned out they hadn’t really been part of the cult; they’d just been the Sunborn’s cousins or something like that.
“They were acquitted. They hadn’t got five steps out of the Temple of the Law when an assassin hired by House Spellmetal put a pair of bolts right through their hearts. Needless to say, any remaining survivors stayed well underground after that.”
“So they must have fabulous prices on their heads,” Smith mused.
“I imagine so. Konderon Spellmetal’s still alive.”
“So Coppercut might have tracked one of them down and threatened him or her with exposure,” said Smith. “Or he might have been proposing to rake it all up again in a book, against House Spellmetal’s wishes.”
“Occasionally the broadsheets like to do Where-Are-They-Now retrospectives,” said Mrs. Smith.
“But whoever killed him went through his papers and burned anything to do with the scandal,” Smith theorized. “I wonder if they got it all?”
He opened the scribe’s case and drew out those papers that remained inside. Mrs. Smith watched him as he shuffled through them.
“They must have been interrupted before they could finish. Anything of note?”
Smith blinked at the pages. They were notes taken in the hasty backhand, apparently copied from city files, and they appeared to trace adoption records for an infant girl, of the house name Sunbolt. She’d been made a ward of the court of the city of Karkateen. There were brief summaries of depositions from persons involved, and then the note that the venue for the child’s case had been changed to Mount Flame. There, after medical certification that she was likely to grow up into the necessary physical type for such work, the infant had been placed in the Mount Flame Mother House for Runners.
The next few pages were all notes of interviews with various persons, concerning the five young runners who had entered active service in the twelfth year of the reign of Chairman Giltbrand.
The very last page was a list of five names, none of them Sunbolt, with four of them crossed out. The remaining name was underlined. It was Teeba Burnbright.
Under that was written: Present employment: house messenger, Hotel Grandview, 4 Front Street, Salesh-by-the-Sea.
“I didn’t know her first name was Teeba,” said Smith distractedly.
“Burnbright?” Mrs. Smith scowled at him. “What’s she got to do with it?”